Amit Varma is a writer based in Mumbai. He worked in journalism for over a decade, and won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007. His bestselling novel, My Friend Sancho, was published in 2009. He is best known for his blog, India Uncut. His current project is a non-fiction book about the lack of personal and economic freedoms in post-Independence India.

This is the 70th installment of Rhyme and Reason, my weekly set of limericks for the Sunday Times of India…

15 October, 2012

Small Brother is Watching You

Some people demonize CCTV as something as a threat to our privacy, as a tool for ostensible Big Brothers everywhere to potentially be watching us. But in many ways, I think they can do just the opposite: they can empower common people, and act as a check on oppressors, who thrive on controlling the flow of information. As an example, check out this video below, which compiles CCTV footage to show the following sequence of events:

1] Rabia Imran, daughter of Shahbaz Sharif, visits a bakery in Lahore on a Sunday morning. The bakery is closed.

2] One of her minions gets it opened. There’s a sweeper inside, who informs Rabia that the shop will open in the afternoon, and he obviously can’t sell her anything right away.

3] But Rabia needs her sugar kick. She needs it now.

4] She calls another minion. The two minions take the sweeper aside and slap him around. They leave.

5] A few hours later, three more minions, accompanied by uniformed cops, come to the bakery.

6] They take the sweeper outside and thrash him.

7] Then, with the police watching, they bundle him into a van. A few hours later, we are informed, he is dropped off bearing marks of severe assault.

And all this is on CCTV, undeniably there. They can’t even deny it.

Of course, you could argue, so what, we all know this happens, this is hardly a revelation. True. But I think there is a possibility that if Big Brother knows that Small Brother is watching, he might be inclined to behave just a little better. So thank goodness for all the tools of surveillance and of spreading information that empower all of us.

* * *

I hardly need to add that even though this particular footage is from Pakistan, this kind of attitude and behaviour is endemic in India as well. We’re also a developing nation with a feudal mindset. No?

This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?